I recently had the opportunity to attend two interesting conferences, NAACL (North America Association of Computational Linguistics) and CVPR (Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition). They are top conferences in the fields of natural language processing (NLP) and computer vision, respectively, and traditionally, their audiences are…
Posted by Allison Linn When Chris J.C. Burges came to Microsoft Research in 2000, he knew he wanted to work on machine learning projects that would have a real impact on users. Burges definitely succeeded: He ended up being part of a team that created…
Standing atop the tallest educational edifice in the world—the 240-meter (787-foot) tower of Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU)—really makes you think about the impact of education and research. This is home to some of the brightest minds in the world, including 11 Nobel Prize and…
Posted by George Thomas Jr. Microsoft researcher Vasilis Syrgkanis and two colleagues this week unveiled a new approach to understanding and optimizing online bidding and auctions, with implications far beyond the online advertising marketplace in which their study was based. Working with Denis Nekipelov of…
Machine learning is the cornerstone of today’s modern data analysis. The gurus of “big data” analytics are all well versed in machine learning, but most domain specialists still must hire data scientists to meet their data-analysis needs. It's inevitable, though, that the data-modeling chain will become largely…
Posted by Doug Burger Editor's note: Doug Burger, a processor architect by training, is a Microsoft researcher focused on disrupting the very fabric of datacenter processing power in a mobile-first, cloud-first world. I'm excited to highlight a breakthrough in high-performance machine learning from Microsoft researchers.…
It seems that everybody today wants to employ machine learning in their research. And why not? Machine learning promises to transform our ability to understand, model, and predict the world around us. It is pushing boundaries in areas as diverse as image recognition, cardiac patient…
“Scottish independence: polls show it’s too close to call.” “Scotland’s vote likely to be a nail-biter.” “Scottish independence vote on a knife edge as polls put both Yes AND No ahead.” If there was any consensus in the days running up to the momentous Sept.…
Can you tell the difference between the two breeds of corgis? If you’re like many, you probably are barely even aware that such dogs exist, let alone the fact that there are two—and only two—kinds of corgis. Add the detail that those two breeds are…
As do other recreational pilots, Ashish Kapoor learned during flight training that he shouldn’t count on the accuracy of wind forecasts. The best available forecasts in the United States—from the federal government’s Winds Aloft program—have been based largely on data from instrumented weather balloons released…
Sometimes, a dream needs but a nudge to propel it toward reality. That is exactly what Eric Rudder and Peter Lee delivered to Microsoft’s Machine Translation team about a year ago. Rudder, then Microsoft’s chief research and strategy officer, and Lee, head of Microsoft Research,…
Most of us can only dream of having the perfect personal assistant, one who is always there when needed, anticipating our every request and unobtrusively organizing our lives. Cortana, the new digital personal assistant powered by Bing that comes with Windows Phone 8.1, brings users…
